Cammmpbell
Senior Member
- Sep 13, 2011
- 5,095
- 519
- 48
I remember when the first people began to draw a pittance from social security...about 1942, 43. The act was initiated about 1935 and guess what.......the Republicans screamed that it would cost jobs. They continued to scream until the act went to the supreme court twice before it was finally ruled constitutional. Republicans would like to see the poverty stricken back on county poor farms(poorhouses) A couple of acres and a basically empty house where a group of poverty stricken people lived and those who could still amble about would raise and can enough food to feed all of them. This country is lightly sprinkled with unmarked graves from those days.
Social Security is the only program in Washington that month end and month out pays it's own way.
I wish you people had a clue. I wish you could have seen west Tennessee during the depression. Unemployment reached nearly 50%. Grown men cried because they were unable to put food on the table for their families. Men would scrounge around looking for a days work on farms, 12 hours in the fields for $0.75 and their mid day meal. My dad worked in a box factory and ruptured himself lifting loads from a skid and the second day he missed they replaced him. There were no unions, no benefits, no vacation, personal leave, health insurance, workman's comp, etc. If a man could work he was paid...if he couldn't he wasn't.
When my dad got a job as timekeeper on the WPA that was the first regular paycheck he ever drew. He made about $6.50 a week. Believe it or not that was enough to feed us and afford a place to live. He would be sure that my mom kept a pot of navy beans warming on the stove so beggers who knocked on the door knowing we had no work for them could at least have a bowl of beans and a stick of corn bread.
My dad was lucky. When the war started he hired in at Procter and Gamble in Milan, TN where they were cooking TNT and turning out 500# bombs. He worked his way up from laborer to a line superintendent then when he heard they were hiring for a special project in east Tennessee he went to Jackson, TN, interviewed and landed a job working on the Manhatten project in Oak Ridge, TN. Our family did alright after that........all of us. Oak Ridge had over 700 PHD's. 10 times the national average for the population. Those people demanded good schools for their kids and my family was one of thousands who benefited from that. We were so lucky that looking back I have no clue what our fate might have been had we stayed in west Tennessee.
You folks need to get your shit together and your minds right.
Social Security is the only program in Washington that month end and month out pays it's own way.
I wish you people had a clue. I wish you could have seen west Tennessee during the depression. Unemployment reached nearly 50%. Grown men cried because they were unable to put food on the table for their families. Men would scrounge around looking for a days work on farms, 12 hours in the fields for $0.75 and their mid day meal. My dad worked in a box factory and ruptured himself lifting loads from a skid and the second day he missed they replaced him. There were no unions, no benefits, no vacation, personal leave, health insurance, workman's comp, etc. If a man could work he was paid...if he couldn't he wasn't.
When my dad got a job as timekeeper on the WPA that was the first regular paycheck he ever drew. He made about $6.50 a week. Believe it or not that was enough to feed us and afford a place to live. He would be sure that my mom kept a pot of navy beans warming on the stove so beggers who knocked on the door knowing we had no work for them could at least have a bowl of beans and a stick of corn bread.
My dad was lucky. When the war started he hired in at Procter and Gamble in Milan, TN where they were cooking TNT and turning out 500# bombs. He worked his way up from laborer to a line superintendent then when he heard they were hiring for a special project in east Tennessee he went to Jackson, TN, interviewed and landed a job working on the Manhatten project in Oak Ridge, TN. Our family did alright after that........all of us. Oak Ridge had over 700 PHD's. 10 times the national average for the population. Those people demanded good schools for their kids and my family was one of thousands who benefited from that. We were so lucky that looking back I have no clue what our fate might have been had we stayed in west Tennessee.
You folks need to get your shit together and your minds right.
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